Sean Scully Talk Art

Actor Russell Tovey and gallerist Robert Diament meet iconic painter Sean Scully on the eve of his 80th birthday at his studio in north London.

Over the course of his 50-year career, Sean Scully has created an influential body of work that has marked the development of contemporary abstraction. Fusing the traditions of European painting with the distinct character of American abstraction, his work combines painterly drama with great visual delicacy. Often structured around stripes or layered blocks of colour arranged on horizontal and vertical axes, the layers in his paintings attain a fine balance between calm reflection and an intrinsic vitality.